Should the Dakota Access pipeline be stopped? | The Tylt

The company building the pipeline released this statement after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cancelled the environmental review and issued the permit.

“With this action, Dakota Access now has received all federal authorizations necessary to proceed expeditiously to complete construction of the pipeline,” Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, said late Wednesday.

The pipeline's proponents maintain that the design is completely safe. The pipeline is being made with the best technology to ensure that if any leaks were to happen, they would be quickly caught and addressed.

These resources are important, which is why ETP also went above and beyond the state and federal requirements to ensure that our land and water resources would be protected in the unlikely case of a mishap. At the Missouri River crossing in Morton County specifically, the pipe will be 92 feet below the riverbed, which is 88 feet more than what the federal government requires. Gravity alone dictates that any leaks will not make it near the river, but despite that, ETP planned for additional safety features, including extra-thick steel and double walls to help prevent corrosion and mitigate any possible leaks. It will also have shut-off valves on both sides of the river so that if state-of-the-art monitoring technology senses even the slightest change in pressure, the section will be shut down until it can be inspected and repaired. The pipeline will be monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year by full-time operations maintenance staff, including aerial inspections every 10 days, which is more than the federal requirement of just 26 times per year. This pipeline truly will be among the most advanced in our nation. Should an incident occur, stringent regulations ensure that the company takes responsibility to remediate and reclaim land at its own expense.

The pipeline went through all of the appropriate steps required for approval. It sends a bad message to businesses that a project can jump through all the hoops the government asks of it and still be denied.

Most important, this is a legal pipeline that followed all the rules and regulatory process for permitting. This is admitted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that approved the permit and recommended to Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Jo-Ellen Darcy that the easement be granted, it is confirmed by the Standing Rock tribal chairman, who is quoted saying, “That pipeline had every right to go through,” and it was confirmed by four federal judges.

The Standing Rock Sioux argue the pipeline will be built on sacred land and could contaminate the drinking water for millions of people if it were to spring a leak. They say Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, took advantage of loop holes to fast track the process and get around having to consult with the tribe. And the reason to consult with the tribe is to avoid situations like this.

The Sioux tribes have come together to oppose this project, which was approved by the State of North Dakota and the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The nearly 1,200-mile pipeline, owned by a Texas oil company named Energy Transfer Partners, would snake across our treaty lands and through our ancestral burial grounds. Just a half-mile from our reservation boundary, the proposed route crosses the Missouri River, which provides drinking water for millions of Americans and irrigation water for thousands of acres of farming and ranching lands.